Istu awakened

CHAPTER NINE

With the unfamiliar, harsh syllables of the Zr'gsz tongue hissing in her ears. Moriana lay on her belly and watched. The jagged black stone beneath her stung with heat even though her sturdy tunic. Whether the heat came from the sun hanging low in the western sky or the fires burning far below she couldn't tell. She stiffened as she sensed a presence nearby.

'Anything?' asked Darl Rhadaman r'Harmis, lowering himself beside her on the crest of the undulating line of cooled lava.

Moriana pointed with her chin. The maincampof the Watchers lay below. It was a somber place, reflecting its purpose. Walls of dressed lava rock holed like cheese supported flat basalt roofs. The windows had been hewn from the same green-black stone as the roofing. Moriana knew why. Wood, sod or thatch, anything combustible, couldn't safely be used as building material here on the northeastern slope of Omizantrim where hot sparks or ash might descend from the Throat at any time. A fresh Justing of gray ash overlay the compound, a remnant of Omizantrim's eruption weeks before.

The princess set her mouth. The Watchers' architecture might be practical but it did nothing to alleviate the grimness of the task they performed throughout long generations.

She saw them going about their everyday tasks. Men and women ground wheat together turning the man high millstone in a granite bowl with the strength of their own backs. Some knelt to whet the edges of spears and shortswords. A sweating, straining, curiously silent crew manhandled casks of fresh water gathered at springs below from the bed of a wagon built to survive the brutal broken terrain of the badlands. Over by the long oblong mouth of one of the underground bunkers in which the Watchers weathered Omizantrim's outbursts, a sturdy woman with sunbleached hair drawn back in a bun slit the throat of a squealing deer and began to give a group of children a lesson in butchering and dressing meat.

'It's like a combination military camp and monastery,' remarked Darl in a low-pitched voice that carried only a few feet. Moriana glanced at him, nodded slowly.

Since their arrival in Thendrun, Darl had emerged from thecocoon of self-doubt and despair that had wrapped him since Chanobit. On their second night in the emerald keep they had once again become lovers. Whether Darl knew or not what had occurred between her and Khirshagk, he said nothing of it. Moriana felt tempted to ask Ziore if he suspected. She didn't. That would be an invasion of Darl's innermost privacy.

Still, there was something about him that disturbed Moriana. Was it fatalism, discouragement or simply feeling the onset of middle years, the slowing that comes inevitably to even those as robust as the legendary Count-Duke of Harmis? He had held up well on the rapid march from the keep of the Fallen Ones, though. When they had to leave their wardogs behind to advance silently through the badlands, he walked with a firmness and sureness of step that put Moriana, a decade and a half his junior, to shame. 'Where's the creature?' he asked.

'It generally stays in the vicinity of the camp. Sometimes it moves in the dead of night. No one ever sees it. In the morning, it's simply gone, only to turn up elsewhere.' 'Foraging?'

'Apparently not. The Ullapag doesn't eat. It seems to derive its sustenance from the mountain itself.'

'The same animal has survived for ten thousand years?' Darl shook his head in wonder. 'We deal with potent magic' Moriana said nothing.

Something scraped behind her. She turned her head slowly to see Khirshagk approaching gingerly over the sharp lava. The height of a tall man, the Zr'gsz leader moved with surprising grace. However, he and all his kin were less skillful at silent movement than the humans in the party.

After a council of war with the followers who had remained faithful into the depths of Thendrun, Moriana had decided to send one knight back across the Marchant into Samazant to muster men for a new attempt on the City. Darl had been afraid they'd used up their stock of sympathy among the men of the City States. But last night Moriana's crying spells had revealed the Sky City occupation of Kara-Est. News of the seaport's fall would have reached the Empire by the time Sir Thursz reached his home country. Those tidings would make men reconsider the princess's pleas for aid.

A Nevrym forester had gone north down the trail from Thendrun to his home woods to consult Crimpeace, the head of the woods runners. The foresters lacked the instinctive fear of the Hisser that most of the Realm harbored, but they were known also as redoubtable foes of the Dark. This reassured Moriana that her appraisal of the Zr'gsz was accurate. It also let her hope the Nevrymin might aid her, especially since she had promised a substantial gift of gold in return. Like their neighbors the Dwarves of North Keep, the foresters had a healthy regard for specie.

'Have you located the hellbeast yet?' asked Khirshagk, lowering himself beside the humans. His limbs sprawled in away the princess found disconcerting. His dark hide blended with the black rock and evergreens around them as if he had been bred in such surroundings. 'Not yet,' said Darl.

A file of men and women appeared abruptly below and to the left. They wore drab clothes like the folk in camp, with the addition of mottled green and black cloaks. The Zr'gsz were not the only ones practicing camouflage. Not even the four keen-eyed foresters accompanying them had known of that patrol's nearness.

'This country works both for and against us. You can hide an army in these folds. Not even the Watchers have a way of overcoming that.' Dari rubbed the dark stubble on his jaw. 'We may be able to bring this off, after all.' 'I hope you are right,' said Khirshagk.

Moriana reappraised her companion. After his bullheadedness and refusal to take her advice had helped lose the battle at the creek, she had fallen into the error of dismissing his military judgment. Now she was reminded that he knew more of infantry-lore than she; her greatest experience lay in aerial warfare. When the Watcher patrol appeared she had experienced near panic. Her imagination had peopled the tortured black landscape with hordes of Watchers closing unseen on them, Darl had restored perspective. If the intruders moved warily, the Watchers would only discover them through a stroke of luck. 'Maybe their vigilance has flagged,' she said, thinking out loud.

'No,' said Khirshagk simply. 'But…'

'Khirshagk, get back! It's looking this way!' At the urgent whisper from Ziore's jug, the lizard man slithered back down the slope. Moriana flattened herself on the rock and looked around wildly. 'What is? I don't see anything.'

'The Ullapag' said Ziore. 'It sensed Khirshagk.' 'Can it read thoughts?'

'Poorly. Enough to feel the alertness come into its mind. I deflected its attention, set it at ease. I think.'

'I wonder if it can communicate with the Watchers?' asked Moriana.

'Probably,' answered Darl. 'But I don't think it has.' The routine below dragged along calmly.

The two slipped away to join Khirshagk in a fold of the lava. A caprice of wind carried acrid smoke from a fumarole uphill to them. Moriana and Darl coughed and blinked back tears. Khirshagk rocked on his haunches. His eyes had a faraway gaze.

'The Heart. I taste its nearness.' Unconsciously, his tongue flicked from his thin-lipped mouth. It was forked. Moriana felt a disquieting tingle in her loins.

Moriana opened the lid of Ziore's jar. Pink mist spilled from the satchel, became a whirlwind of dancing bright motes and finally shaped itself into a woman, tall, serious and quite lovely despite advanced age.

'Which direction?' she asked. The Zr'gsz pointed a black claw south, past the camp. Ziore looked grave. 'The Ullapag lies that way as well.' 'It's guarding the Heart?' asked Moriana. 'So it seems.'

They made their way down the valley to where the others waited. The four Nevrymin waited with the Fallen Ones. Moriana sat on an outcropping of lava and let Darl explain the situation.

'We can't wait for night?' asked Quickspear, a narrow man whose habitual grin was rendered lopsided by a long knife slash down the left side of his face. He cradled the weapon that gave him his name, fingers nervously dancing along its shaft.

'My people do not function well in the cold.' TheZr'gsz weren't true reptiles. They fell somewhere between mammalsand lizards – furred yet scaly, nursing their young though oviparous, warm-blooded but inclined to become sluggish when the sun went down.

'We've only two hours of sunlight left us' said Darl. 'Here's my plan…'

Vapors steamed upward from the molten rock that bubbled in a pit cut like a slash across the mountain's flank. On a broad expanse of rock above the fumarole sat a vast creature, as unmoving as the lava beneath it.

A tall man could lie comfortably in the space between the bulging half-lidded eyes. Its hide was warty, green dapples on black mimicking the pattern of the Watchers' cloaks. Its immense body lay among four legs that seemed unable to support its bulk. It had the sloped back of a toad instead of the crooked back of a frog. Obsidian eyes stared out, missing nothing.

Moriana scarcely believed the thing lived. No motion of breathing stirred its bloated sides. But she felt its presence in her mind, alien and imposing.

She studied the natural amphitheatre scooped in the side of Omizantrim. Fifteen yards across and forty deep, its open side faced the Watchers' camp several hundred yards downslope. The fumarole lay at the inside end of the amphitheatre, with the Ullapag's rock raised like a dais above it. At either side of the opening stood a single Watcher. Two more Watchers stood in the rocks above the monster, armed with bows and spears. Though the pit's stinging fumes blew in their faces, they showed no sign of discomfort.

The four Nevrym Forest men were sneaking up on the four sentries. Moriana, Darl and Khirshagk, with several of his men, waited hidden on the northern wall. Though the foresters assured her they could capture the sentries without difficulty, she worried. She balked at killing any of the Watchers, and she didn't trust the Zr'gsz to be scrupulous in avoiding the slaying of their ancient antagonists. The bulk of the party of Hissers waited in concealment around the Watchers' encampment to bottle up any attempts at aiding the Ullapag. But that had to be done, mora! niceties or not.

If the sentries were alerted before the foresters reached them, Khirshagk and his men would have to deal with them willy-nilly. Moriana and Darl had to confront the Ullapag, by means mystic or mundane as required.

She still had no clear idea what the Ullapag did. It looked too ungainly to run down the fleet Zr'gsz in rough terrain like this. One thing it did attempt was to detect the nearness of the Hissers by a special sense. Ziore hovered beside Moriana, dulling the Ullapag's mental sensitivity to the presence of a hundred of the very beings it was meant to ward against.

A flicker of movement not far away caught Moriana's eye. It was Brightlaugher, a young blond boy painfully proud of the skimpy golden fuzz on his chin. He moved up on the nearest of the Watchers. He was almost in position lor the quick final rush.

'Moriana.' The low voice was so distorted by effort she almost didn't recognize Ziore. 'Moriana, you must help. Can't hold by myself any more.' 'What?' she whispered back. Darl and Khirshagk stared at them.

'The Ullapag. Help me blanket it.' 'But… I can't!'

'You can!' Ziore snapped. 'Since I've known you your power has increased steadily. Help me, or all is lost!'

The princess wondered if the nun was right. Then she shut her eyes and concentrated.

She didn't have to grope to find the Ullapag's mind. It loomed bright, short of sentience, but old, old and very watchful. A bright thread of suspicion shimmered in the creature's mind. Moriana felt Ziore's presence and realized that the genie couldn't soothe the sense of wrongness troubling the Ullapag. She stretched out her own mind, soothing without words. The doubt-thread vanished.

I did it! Moriana thought. The realization exhilarated her. Had her power grown because she'd slept with Khirshagk? He said her ancestor namesake hadn't perceived true magic herself. Had she gained something her forebear hadn't?

Hidden within her tunic, the Destiny Stone turned black. A rock loosened, twisting away beneath her foot. She stifled a yelp of alarm but couldn't save herself from falling.

The guard below turned and saw Brightlaugher rising from behind a bush twelve feet away. The Nevrym boy lunged. The spear came down, and the boy gasped as he ran onto its broad point.

The other guards shouted alarm. One standing above the Ullapag nocked an arrow and drew. Sprawled among the biting edges of the larva, Moriana recovered her grip on her own bow, drew, fired.

The Watcher stiffened and pitched forward, falling past the Ullapag's perch to disappear into the boiling lava. Foresters wrestled with the other two. One of Khirshagk's warriors, overcome by battle-lust, leaped past Moriana and struck down the Watcher as he struggled to free his spear from Brightlaugher's belly. The Ullapag screamed.

Moriana heard it as a bass thrumming, almost below the level of hearing. The Zr'gsz standing over the sentry jerked as if struck by an arrow. He began to twitch and his head twisted to score his own shoulders with his fangs.

'Unnghh.' Khirshagk's body was bent backward like a bow. His jaw was locked and his eyes rolled wildly. In spite of the agony gripping him, he ground out words between his teeth.'You must… slay it. Or… we… die!'

She stared at the Ullapag. It had grown until the princess realized it had lifted itself upward enough to allow a huge throat sac to expand beneath it.

'It's producing a vibration,' Ziore shouted. Moriana barely heard her, though the hum of the Ullapag wasn't loud. 'It'll kill the lizard men.'

As if to prove her right, the Zr'gsz who had dashed into the open fell to the ground beside his victim. His eyes stared upward. His mouth shone darkly with his own blood.

Moriana drew another arrow from her quiver and shot, aiming for an eye. The broadhead flew true.

It was four feet from target when a pale tongue leaped from the Ullapag's mouth and snagged it in the air like a fly.

Darl was up and running, broadsword in hand, shouting, 'Victory! Moriana and victory!'

The moist eyes swiveied and fixed him with their baleful gaze. The throat sac expanded further, the humming came louder. The monster's vibrations obviously affected humans, but not as they did the Zr'gsz. The uncontrollable contractions of Khirshagk's muscles were breaking him like a thief on a wheel. His men rolled on the ground at his side, hissing in terminal anguish.

The Ullapag was puzzled. Here was a man running at it with hostile intent. Yet its deathsong to Zr'gsz had no effect. Was it possible a human might attack it? The Ullapag pounced.

Darl escaped being crushed under the monster's bulk by inches. The Count-Duke rolled and came up running. He charged. Swinging his sword doublehanded he hacked at the bloated, warty flank.

His sword rebounded with the sound of a stick striking a poorly stretched drum. The monster's lipfess mouth opened and the tongue shot out. Instantly sword and swordarm were tangled in loops of wet, pallid flesh.

Darl tried to pull away. The tongue held him fast. It began reeling him inexorably inward. He twisted, slashed at the tongue with his dagger. Green blood sprayed his chest.

A mental squeal of agony made Moriana and Ziore wince. The Ullapag raised a foreleg and clumsily clutched Darl, trying to hurry him forward into the pink cavern of its mouth. Darl dug in his heels and locked his knees but lacked the strength to resist for more than seconds.

It earned him life. Moriana needed no more than a heartbeat to fit a new arrow, draw and aim, to let fly.

With the monster's tongue coiled like a serpent around Darl, nothing hindered the arrow's flight. It struck the eye and sank to the fletchings, The Ullapag reared, hauling Dar! off his feet. A second arrow followed the first.

The tongue uncoiled, spilling Darl onto the hard lava. Even as he fell he struck at the monster's throat sac. The blade cut through the membrane.

A third arrow sang its shrill song of death. The other eye exploded. Darl rocked to his knees and drove his sword into the moss-green belly.

The Destiny Stone turned white. The dying Ullapag fell to the right, rolled onto its back away from the kneeling warrior. Its legs kicked spasticaily at the air.

As though dropped by an invisible hand, Khirshagk fell limp among the rocks. His men lay about him, frozen in attitudes of ghastly death. Moriana knelt by his side. His eyes opened, looked into hers, then he said, 'Thank you.' She was up and running to Dad's side.

'How could you do it?' raged Ludo, the Chief Warder of Omizantrim. 'For a hundred centuries we've kept our faith with Felarod for all humanity. How could you betray us?'

'Don't talk to the princess in that tone, pig,' snarled Darl. He came forward, face dark with menace. Moriana waved him back.

'No, Darl. He has a right to speak that way.' The words threatened to congeal in her throat. 'Listen carefully, Warder Ludo. I'm not betraying anybody. I must explain.' Ludo spat at her.

'Calm down, old man,' Quickspear said softly, bouncing his spear suggestively in one hand. 'Brightlaugher was my sister's husband's cousin, and well-loved.'

'He got what he deserved.' The old man's blue eyes were merciless and as fearless as a hawk's. 'He was a traitor to men, embarked on a traitor's errand.' Quickspear raised his weapon.

'Hold!' shouted Moriana. 'Quickspear leave us.' The dark-haired forester scowled at her, weighing rebellion. He was no fool. He left.

Moriana slumped on her stool. She massaged her face with long, slender fingers. She suddenly snatched them away, screaming. They were drenched in blood. But it was only a trick of the candlelight.

'I am Moriana Etuul,' she said, 'rightful Queen of the City in the Sky.'

'Pah! You live with the stink of Vridzish magic. What else can we expect of you, witch?' At a warning growl, Moriana spoke without turning her head.

'Please, Darl, let me finish.' He subsided. 'Thank you, Darl.' Leaning forward, she told the entire story to the Chief Warder, of her sister's usurpation of the Throne of Winds, of Synalon's dabbling with the blackest of magics and her desire to make a compact with the Lords of Infinite Night.

'So it is to fight the Dark Ones that I march against the City,' she told him earnestly. 'The Zr'gsz are no more foes to men. They know their time is past. They aid me to recover ancient treasures they were forced to leave when exiled from the Sky City.' She inhaled deeply. 'When they have those things, they'll return to Thendrun in peace. Khirshagk, Instrumentality of the People, gives me his word on this.' Ludo fixed her with an eye as frosty as the Southern Waste.

'You're either a liar or the most accomplished fool I've ever encountered.' He jerked his head at Darl. 'You can have your bully-boy kill me now.'

'No one's going to harm you.' She started. Ludo stared past her shoulder, his eyes wide.

She turned. A Zr'gsz male stood there, a torch gripped in his talons.

'Khirshagk want you,' he said. 'Come. Now, Pleezzz.' Moriana and Darl looked at one another. Then they followed the messenger into the cool, starry night.